Sometimes I feel like the ringleader of the circus...
This was the scene tonight at the dinner table: My wife was trying to keep the little guy (7 months) from losing it while our toddler decided to start finger painting with his chocolate pudding. As ring leader, I made the executive decision to allow him to continue finger painting. This was so we could have ten more seconds to shove food into our mouths before we took them up to bed.
WRONG decision. In the real circus, someone would have just been eaten by a lion. At our family circus, however, nothing was eaten--mainly because the pudding ended up on walls, floors, tables, and pretty much everywhere but in our toddler's belly.
I gathered everyone upstairs for the next act. It's appropriately named "silly time." Silly time is when we encourage our toddler to run around and get out every last drop of energy so that he'll sleep through the night. While I managed "silly time," my wife handled the little guy. We then set them both up for the grand finale...BED TIME.
I grabbed our toddler to give Mommy and baby brother a kiss and to say "nite nite" and "lub lub lub," and I brought him into his bedroom. He laughed when I tucked him in. I walked back into the bedroom to give the little guy one more kiss and realized that it's crazy, it's exhausting, but this life we're living really is the greatest show on Earth.
-- Jason
